HAUS AM MOOR

28th November 2013

The more houses I look at, whether online or in magazines or in the flesh, the more I find myself hankering for this: a perfectly simple and understated timber clad ‘box’ – although referring to this house as a box feels wrong as there is so much beauty in this building’s simplicity of form.

I’ve seen such houses sitting very well within my native Scottish landscape, having been designed to work in harmony with their rugged surroundings, and there are plenty of examples to admire in Scandinavian countries, like this earlier post about a house on Vindö, an island in the Stockholm archipelago in Sweden, and this post about Villa Wallin, located on Yxlan in the northern Stockholm archipelago.

And this house, Haus am Moor (which translates as ‘House on the Moor’) is another great example of this aesthetic. Austrian studio Bernardo Bader Architects designed this timber cabin in the rural area of Vorarlberg, and used 60 locally sourced trees – combining spruce, fir and elm – to create both the exterior and interior finishes.

The structure of the building is concrete, and the finish is revealed in feature walls and ceilings throughout as a complement to the timber. A wood burning stove creates a central focal point to the open plan living, dining and kitchen area, and additional heating is provided by a ground source heat pump.

The timber was also used to make the internal doors and flooring and some of the furniture, ensuring a minimum of waste and creating a unified selection of finishes that further enhances the flow of space. I love the restraint of this interior yet – to me anyway – it doesn’t feel cold. It feels serene. Rather than colour, this living space is about natural, organic textures, where the surrounding landscape itself provides the ‘decoration’.